Interview: Bill Payne (Little Feat)

The initial history of Little Feat is a case that is oft repeated in the annals of  rock music: that of a band that burned bright but fast. Hailed upon its arrival in the early ’70s for its combination of swampy grooves, tight harmonies, and virtuoso musicians, the band could easily be classified as “your favorite band’s favorite band.” Connections to Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin, and other luminaries could alone cement a legacy, but the endurance of tracks like “Dixie Chicken,” “Truck Stop Girl,” “Strawberry Flats,” “Oh, Atlanta,”, “Willin’,” and “New Delhi Freight Train” have proven the merits of this oft-overlooked powerhouse of a group.

As the last surviving original member of Little Feat, keyboardist and vocalist Bill Payne has had his fair share of experience, both on the road and in the studio. He’s played with the likes of Pink Floyd, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Jimmy Buffett, and The Doobie Brothers, among many others, while also keeping busy as a songwriter, both within Little Feat and in collaboration with such revered figures as the late Robert Hunter.

These topics and more were covered as Payne sat down with Asheville Stages before Little Feat’s Thursday, May 26, performance at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in support of the 45th anniversary of its seminal 1978 live album, Waiting for Columbus.

Niko Gonzalez: What’s your connection to Asheville?

Bill Payne: I’ve been there quite a few times. It’s a lovely part of the country. I think the last time we were there, Warren Haynes might’ve sat in with us. I was probably there with the Doobie Brothers, but I’ve been there many times with Little Feat as well. It’s a great place.

NG: Do you have a connection with the arts scene as well?

BP: Not really. I mean, I love everywhere and I don’t live anywhere [laughs]. That sort of thing.

NG: What keeps you coming back to Little Feat 50 years onward?

BP: I’d say the depth of the music. We’ve got a new iteration of the band with [guitarist] Scott Sharrard, who I met [when] he was the musical director for Gregg Allman about seven years ago and I was on a Doobie Brothers tour at that time. Tony Leone on drums —I’ve known Tony for a long time. He’s played with Larry Campbell, Phil Lesh, Levon Helm. He’s played with everybody, and so we’re very pleased to have him in the group. 

He’s been studying Richie Hayward’s drumming since he was 12 years old and he’s in his 50s now. It doesn’t mean he can play like Richie, but there’s a great compliment someone gave him a while back and they said, “Well he’s not Richie Hayward but Richie Hayward isn’t him either.” And I thought, “Exactly!” Both those guys [Sharrard & Leone] are just a pure pleasure to work with. We still have Sam Clayton on congas, Kenny Gradney on bass, Fred Tackett on guitars, and of course I’m playing the keyboards. So it’s been a lot of fun and that’s really what keeps the proverbial boat afloat all these years.

NG: I would say a lot of the sound of Little Feat comes from the rhythm section, so to fill those drums has to be quite a task.

BP: Yeah, it is. The rhythm section is one thing; the chords that we throw in are another. I’ve had people, a lot of musicians, come up and go, “Well that song or this or that, it was…“. And I’d go, “More difficult than you thought?” And they’d go, “Yes.” So, I get it, man. If we were playing “Happy Birthday,” it would sound like Little Feat.

NG: You bring up The Band and Levon Helm. Little Feat reminds me of that, where it’s deceptively simple: It sounds laid back, but then you get into it and these are consummate musicians.

BP: Yeah, it’s a good group of people to play with, and you have to be a good musician to play the music.

NG: Over 50 years, you’ve been touring and touring. It can be really grueling. Has there been anything that’s remained your favorite part about it over the years, that kind of keeps that aspect going?

BP: It’s hard to say, but if you’re in a place that you’re not happy with, you know you’re gonna be outta there pretty quick. That’s one aspect. I think that going to towns you’re familiar with — the food is a good thing. Obviously, with COVID, it’s turned things upside down in terms of relationships with people. We can’t hang out with as many people as we used to. That part is pretty sad, but, you know, we’re all working through it together, so…what can I say?

NG: Is there anything that you were initially soured on about touring that’s sort of come around in the intervening decades?

BP: Well, when I first started touring, I didn’t like it. Like you said: it was grueling. It was in 1970, technically, and I just thought, “Oh man, do I really wanna do this? Can I do it?” You know, the different waters messing with my system. I couldn’t sleep and it was a mess. And then we met a few girls out on the road, and I thought, “Well, touring’s not so bad. I love it.” [laughs]

NG: Sure [laughs]. Sure, there’s always one thing.

BP: Yeah. So, that was early on. But no, I think in general that it’s nice to come back to places you’re familiar with. I mean, I like going to Australia, right? Been to Australia 10 times. New Zealand, Japan…Just in terms of places overseas. And of course there’s Europe, which is wonderful, and the United States. I like going up to New York [City] and Chicago and a lot of places. It’s been a little while since we’ve played Taos, New Mexico, but that’s a cool place, too. I read a lot, Niko, so my wife talked me into getting a Kindle about 11 years ago and that keeps me pretty active as well.

NG: You and your band have played with scores of legends over the years. What’s your secret to creating and maintaining these strong relationships within the music industry?

BP: Well, I think, generally speaking, it’s not so much my relationship with the music industry as just people. I guess we’ve been doing it long enough to where they go, “Oh, let’s see what Bill’s up to.” That kind of thing. And then beyond that, you actually have to deliver. I think there’s that part of it and you gotta be a little proactive on your part too to keep relationships alive, so that’s the way it works.

Photo by Polly Payne

NG: So, kind of going off of that, at one point Jimmy Page cited Little Feat as his favorite band back in 1975.

BP: Yeah, that was really nice of him.

NG:And then your songs have been covered numerous times. Linda Rondstadt’s version of “Willin’” from Heart Like a Wheel comes to mind. Do you have a particular favorite of any of those covers?

BP: Well, The Byrds covered “Truck Stop Girl,” which is a song Lowell [George] and I wrote. That was cool. I think…god, Emmylou Harris covered “Oh, Atlanta,” so, yeah. Lowell and I, when we first started the band in 1969, we were hoping that we would at least musically be copacetic with the musical community, which we definitely have been. I don’t want to say it’s not a big deal, but I think what I’m most proud of is being viewed as a musician and that Little Feat is a — you said it earlier — it’s consummate musicians, and that’s not a bad place to hang your hat, you know?

NG:No, not at all! But on the flip side, you’ve covered numerous artists. One that came up to me that was interesting was Phish, but Phish are of an ilk to Little Feat in my mind, especially live. Is there a method to choosing who you decide to cover?

BP: No, because we haven’t covered a lot of songs over the years. We keep it pretty close to the vest, and we’re good writers, so we don’t necessarily have to go out. Although I’ve been writing with a lot of different people as of late outside of Little Feat: Charlie Starr is one of them, from Blackberry Smoke,. We’ve written two new songs. Paul Muldoon, who’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who teaches at Princeton, held a top chair at Oxford — we’ve written, like, eight or nine tunes. And I’ve got 20 songs with Robert Hunter. 

Yeah, so, you know I’m 73 years old, still able to find middle C, which is good on the keyboard. Somebody a while back went, “Well, how do you play ‘Dixie Chicken’ fresh?” And I say, “Well, you know, how do we keep ‘Happy Birthday’ fresh?” It comes from the heart, I think. Little Feat makes it fun because we play things differently. We’re not playing to a click. Arrangements can be five minutes long, [or] they can be seven minutes long. Your improvisational skills are put to a test and I think that’s a good way to keep everything fresh as well.

NG Well, I guess that goes into my next question: Do you have a favorite song to whip out on tour? I know “Dixie Chicken” obviously comes up a lot. Do you have a preference between deep cuts or well known tracks? Because I know audience reception can mean a lot to what songs you choose.

BP: I would say that what we’re doing now is playing [Little Feat’s 1978 album] Waiting for Columbus. There’s a couple tunes that we haven’t played in a while, “Mercenary Territory” being one of them. And that song, it’s fun to play. It is rather structured in a certain sense — we’ve got a couple places we can take off on it. But hearing Scott Sharrard sing it is a joy. The horn section sounds great — Fred Tackett’s got a terrific trumpet solo in the middle of it, which it didn’t have on the record. I’m glad we’re diving into deeper cuts. We did that [song] in November of last year, [and] we did it the top part of this year, which was on a tour that was by request from fans. 

So, we were playing “Texas Rose Café,” “Strawberry Flats” — some stuff we haven’t played in a long, long time, so that was fun, too. It’s a deep well and we’re also going to record an album, probably next year — and I bet we’re going to have several records, to be honest with you. Fred Tackett said about a year ago, “This band can play anything,” and we can, so why not open the flood gates? Let’s let it roll.

NG: Well, you mentioned Waiting for Columbus, sort of rolling out that record. It’s interesting when a band, and if I can make a definitive statement…

BP: Sure.

NG: …that a band’s sort of trademark or landmark record is a live record, and that one sort of stands tall. I mean, you see it on lists of the best live records ever. Do you have a sort of preference to recording live records over studio? And what’s the method for you of recording a live record, and getting a record like Waiting for Columbus, which I’m sure is such a spontaneous thing to create in a way? I don’t think any of the members could’ve predicted that it would blow up the way it did.

BP: Yeah, you’re right: we couldn’t have. Although I gotta admit, when I heard it in the studio, the hair on my arms went straight up. It was like, “Oh my god, this sounds so good!” We were a little stiff in the studio, I thought. There’s a freedom to playing live. Musicians react to sound, right? We react to what we can hear. I’ve done it both ways, playing with other groups — everybody from Pink Floyd on up and down. 

I don’t have an excuse or anything for the admiration for being able to record, be it live or in the studio. I think it works great both ways — there’s challenges to both. The challenge to the red light is when I was working with Leftover Salmon, helping produce a record of theirs, I told the guys, “Look, choose an audience: Whether it’s me, the guy cleaning up the studio — whoever you want. But choose an audience and play to that person.” That’s all you do when you’re playing live. We’re sneaking up on a glass of water to get a drink in the studio sometimes, and I think the way to eliminate that is just to go for the throat, which is really what you have to do live.

NG: And you only get one take, really, to do it. I mean, you have multiple nights, but to do a song all the way through, especially a song that can go on for minutes, you don’t have the luxury of overdubs. Unless you decide to go back into the studio, but it seems like you and the band wanted to keep it completely live.

BP: Well, Waiting for Columbus did have overdubs. There was guitars, some vocals, etc. I manipulated a keyboard solo. I never did any keyboard overdubs, nor did Richie Hayward do any drum overdubs, but I took a couple nights where I thought my keyboard solo did some cool twist in it and I put that into it. 

But I think, in general, it actually goes both ways, too. When I was working with Jimmy Buffett, we’re playing in front of 30,000 people; 60,000 people. Some guy on stage is going, “Well, I just…I have to adjust to do this.” And I go, “All you gotta do, as far as you can hear…just play!” I know it’s easy to say that. But if you know what you’re playing, as opposed to just playing something that you can’t play, that’s where you just gotta turn your head off and stop editing and just let it fly.

NG:  Just let it rip.

BP: Yeah.

NG:  So then what does the future hold for the band?

BP: Well, we’ve got a PBS special that’s coming out in June. We did two nights at the Ryman [Auditorium in Nashville] and there’s a lotta cool people on that. I played keyboards with one of the guys from Widespread Panic — JoJo Hermann was playing on “Oh, Atlanta” and “Old Folks’ Boogie” with me. He’s a cool, cool guy. Charlie Starr sang on that evening with us. Tommy Emmanuel is playing guitar — if you’re unfamiliar with him, check him out. He’s an acoustic guitar player from Australia. He now lives over here, but he’s phenomenal. He and I did a solo on “Dixie Chicken” that is gonna be on, I think, the CD extended version of this show. 

We’re looking to record another album, or series of albums— projects. And we’ve got some new management, which have really, really been crucial to allowing us to do anything. That’s Vector Management out of Nashville. They’ve got offices in London, New York, Los Angeles. They’re just the best people in the world to work with. We’ve got a team finally that envelops Little Feat.

NG: And I feel like that’s the secret to longevity is keeping a tight team together.

BP: Yeah, or be patient, let things develop the way they’re gonna go. I was out in the wilderness for quite a few years, but I was always working. And the Doobie Brothers are dear friends of mine, and I really appreciated that ride. Just a great bunch of guys, and I still stay in touch with them.

NG: Well, thank you so much for the conversation! That was great.

BP: Yeah, and thank you for calling it a conversation, because that’s what it is!

IF YOU GO

Who: Little Feat
When: Thursday, May 26, 8 p.m.
Where: Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, 87 Haywood St., harrahscherokeecenterasheville.com
Tickets: $47-87

(Photo by Hank Randall)